"I do not know what you mean by old habits and new habits," cry I, angrily; "if you think he did not want me to go with him, you are very much mistaken; he would have much rather that I had."
"But you," looking at me penetratingly, and speaking with a sort of alacrity, "you did not see it? I remember of old" (with a smile) "your abhorrence of the sea."
"You are wrong again," say I, reddening, and still speaking with some heat, "I wished to go—I begged him to take me. However sick I had been, I should have liked it better than being left moping here, without a soul to speak to!"
Silence for a moment. Then he speaks with a rather sarcastic smile.
"I confess myself puzzled; if you were dying to go, and he were dying to take you, how comes it that you are sitting at the present moment on this bench?"
I can give no satisfactory answer to this query, so take refuge in a smile.
"I see," say I, tartly, "that you have still your old trick of asking questions. I wish that you would try to get the better of it; it is very disadvantageous to you, and very trying to other people!"
He takes this severe set-down in silence.
The trees that surround the garden are slowly darkening. The shadows that intervene between the round masses of the sycamore-leaves deepen, deepen. A bat flitters dumbly by. Vick, to whose faith all things seem possible, runs sharply barking and racing after it. We both laugh at the fruitlessness of her undertaking, and the joint merriment restores suavity to me, and assurance to him.
"And are you to stay here by yourself all the time he is away—all?"